therein, seeing he is Lord of heaven and eth, &c. hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of our habitation:" and Heb. 3: 4. "He that built all things is God." So in Psalın 47: 7. 45: 6. Matt 23: 22.5: 35. Dan. 6:26. Matt. 6: 33. Job 37: 22. where God is said to be a king, to have a throne, a sceptre, a kingdom, &c. Thus also in Gen. 1: 27, and Eccl. 7: 29, where God is said to have made man upright, and in his own image. There are a few passages also, which speak of God in connection with spirit or spirits, where the employment of Shin could not convey the meaning of the sacred writers: thus John 4: 24. "God is a spirit," would, if Shin were employed for God, and Ling or any other synonymous term for spirit, merely convey to the Chinese mind the idea that a spirit or spirits in general were spiritual beings; thus ex. plaining Shin in the sense of spirits, as Kang-he does, but not pointing out the spiritual nature of the Divine Being. So in Num. 16: 22. the sentence "the God of the spirits of all flesh," would, if Shin were employed, be understood as merely adding intensity to the word spirits, but not as intimating supremacy over them. 7. By understanding Shin in the sense of spirit, we are enabled to account for the fact of the Chinese never having employed the term when speaking of the originator, governor, and disposer of all things, which on the supposition that it means God is unaccountable. They have had occasion to speak frequently of a being who caused all things to come forth, who conferred on man the virtuous principle, and who decides the fates of emperors and dynasties; and yet they never call that being, with reference to those acts and attributes, Shin but Te. They say, that Te is a Shin, but they never say that Shin does these things. Other nations have employed, in such connections, the term which they used generically for God; and we cannot account for the Chinese not having employed Shin in such a sense, but because they did not consider that Shin meant God, but spirit; which meaning all their dictionaries and classical writers have put upon the terin. The Chinese in this case are consistent; for in no other language do men speak positively and directly of spirit ding the things above referred to. This fact also accounts for their not paying their highest adoration to Shin, in the public and solemn services, which are detailed in the imperial ritual. Te, and the deified progenitors of the royal house who are Tes, are honoured with the highest services, while those who are simply designated. Shins, and worshipped as such, are treated with only secondary honours This, if Shin mean God is strange; but understanding it in the sense of spirit, the fact is easily accounted for. Assigning such a meaning to the term, we are enabled to see how it is, that the Chinese, whether in writing or speaking, never attach that idea of dignity and majesty to Shin, which they would do if it signified God; but as it means only spirit we need not be surprised, if when speaking of mere Shins, they should not appear to be affected with any peculiar veneration and awe, more than we should at an invisible intelligence, who might be supposed to be before us. We can here see also how it is that in all their philological works, which are arranged according to subjects, the class of Shins should never be ranked in the first place, but be always placed after Heaven, earth and ever min; a classification easily accounted for, if we understand Shin in the sense of spirit, but not if we interpret it to mean God. It is singular, also, that both the Taouist and Buddhist writers, in works published by themselves, should never have given to their deities the designation of Shin. The View of the three Religions of China, gives a number of names of worshipped beings, among which the Shins, who are mere spirit and nothing higher, do not occur until nearly the end of the work, and the name is attached only to a few who are viewed in an inferior capacity. We conceive therefore, that those have not rightly interpreted the word Shin, who in spite of the united testimony of Chinese authorities have insisted upon understanding it in the sense of God. 8. By understanding Shin in the sense of spirit, we may account for certain predicates of a superhuman character being ascribed to the Shins, though the more exalted attributes, which the Chinese consider peculiar to divinity, are not attached to those who are Shins alone. Thus, for instance, vast knowledge, even amounting in some instances to prescience; great power, which enables them to guide the winds and influence the rain; the ability to affect men's minds in a moral point of view; the capacity of being present in all substances; the being invisible and inaudible; the being abstruse, and yet manitest; the being supposed capable of answering supplications; the presiding over sun, moon, and stars, with hills and rivers, drought and inundation: the possessing moral qualities, such as sincerity and uprightness, according to which they exalt the humble and depress the proud all these have been predicated of spirits in other countries, and such spirits have even been worshipped by different nations, without their being accounted by those who worship them as divinities On the other hand, the works of creation and superintending Providence, are not in other countries ascribed to spirits, as in China they are not ascribed to the Shins; shewing that the word spirit corresponds more to Shin than divinity does. At the same time, no disparagement is cast on the word Shin by the Chinese, any more than on the term spirit by us. It is on this account, that Shin may properly be used for the Spirit of God by Christians, as 帝之神 Te che shin is understood in the sense of the spirit of Te by the Chinese. 9. By understanding Shin in the sense of spirit and not God, we shall be able to account for the fact of all those Christian writers, who have adopted Shin in the sense of God, having been obliged either to abandon it, or to qualify it by some term, in order to make it convey to the Chinese the seuse intended. Thus the Roman Catholics, who first adopted Shin for God in the translation of the Harmony of the Gospels and the Epistles, found in the British Museum, were soon compelled to give it up, and use Theen or Shang-te. Subsequently, when they saw reasons for rejecting T'heen or Shang-te they did not return to the use of Shin, but resorted to T'heen choo. In all the controversies, likewise, which took place between the Jesuits and the Dominicans, as to the proper term for expressing the Deity, the dispute between them was not, whether Shin or 'T'hëen and Shang-te should be used; but whether T'heen and Shang-te or T'heen choo, should be employed. The word Shin never came into discussion, nor did either party think for a moment of proposing it. We have looked through several volumes of the Lettres Edifiantes, and we have not been able to find a single allusion, from either party, to the propriety of using Shin in the sense of God. They appear, at the tine alluded to, entirely to have discarded all idea of Shin's meaning God, and to have been perfectly satisfied that it meant spirit only. The various parties fought hard to see which of the two terms, 天 t'heen, or Theen-choo, should be adopted; these terms appeared to the disputants, on either side, to convey the idea of Di vinity; but were severally objected to by their antagonists; t'heen, on the ground of its being likely to be mistaken for the visible heavens ; and Theen-choo, because it might possibly be confounded with various idols of that name; but had they conceived that Shin meant divinity, and was the generic name for God, as is now thought, there would have been no necessity for the parties contending any further; as another term, entirely distinct from either of those about which they were arguing would have answered every purpose, and set the question entirely at rest. But they, neither of them ventured to propose Shin certainly not because they were unacquainted with that term in all its bearings: (we only wish that our Protestant Mis sionaries of the present day were as well acquainted with Chinese literature, as were the early Romish Missionaries); but because they had already weighed it in the balance, and found it wanting. Neither were they guided in their rejection of Shin by a deference to the Pipal bull; the term in question having been given up on philological grounds before that bull was issued; and that decretal not having been designed to decide the case of Shin, but whether T'heen-choo should be used in preference to T'heen or Shang-te. Still, without any order to that effect, the mere force of the argument drawn from the meaning of the word led the Romish Missionaries, in all ages, (with the exception of the period when they began their labours), to understand Shin in the sense of spirit, aud that only. In like manner. Morrison and Milne, who adopted Shin for God in their translation of the Scriptures, soon found that they could not depend on that term alone, to convey an adequate impression of the Deity, to the minds of the Chinese, in the prosecution of their labours; and therefore, they adopted in their preachings and tracts, some other term to render it inore definite and intelligible, in the sense in which they intended it. For instance, they used chin shin, for the true God: chin hwo shin, for the true and living God: shin choo, for the divine Lord; (which term however, they came to dislike very much, on account of its being the same phrase with that employed for the parental tablet, worshipped by the Chinese), and Shin t'heen, the spiritual heavens, as we have already seen. In the last work which he published, Milne used f 上帝 Shang-te for God throughout, without any qualification or addition; and in Morrison's latest Chinese work, published in 1831, called the Domestic Instructor, he has employed indiscriminately Shin, 真神 chin shin, 神主 shin choo, 神天 shin 'heen, 天 theen; Shin t'heen Shang te, and Theen 天帝 te: 天皇 Thëen hwang; 天帝主神 Thëen te shin choo; 神大上帝 Shin t'höen Shang te; 神天大帝 Shin 'héen ta te; 天皇神主 T'héen hwang shin choo;天皇上帝 'héen hwang Shang-te;上帝 Shang-te; 天上上帝 Theen shang Shang-te;眞神上帝 Chin shin Shang-te;天上之 * Morrison has in order to express the phrase, u3ed 大 "Jesus the Son of God," T'heen tsze, the Son of Heaven, which is a term solely appro. priated to the Emperor of China 上帝 Theeu shug che Shang-te,天皇神父 Theen hwang shin foo, Shang-te shin theen Now it must occur to any one, on reading over these various modes of expressing the Deity, that the compiler of the Domestic Instructor must have been very much dissatisfied with the term originally chosen by him. self, or he would not have adopted so many others, as it were to add clearness to the idea. These other terms, let it be remenbered (with the exception of chin shin.) not possessing the least affinity to the one first selected. In every other case, in which Shin forms a part of the phrase, the Shin is the qualifying term; while the others such as choo, Lord, t'heen, heaven, and ✨ foo, father, are the principal words depended on to express the idea of God. In all other cases, where Theen te, T'heen hwang, and Shang-te, Ta te, have either been used evident to all those acquainted alone or in combination, it will be with the Chinese language, that these latter bear no affinity nor relation to the former, and would not be conjoined with, nor used as explanatory of one another by the natives themselves. The inference to be drawn from the union of such heterogeneous terms therefore is, that Morrison, towards the close of his life, did not consider Shin alone an adequate term to express the Deity, and that he was obliged, in order to insure his being understood, to employ a series of other terms totally distinct in their nature from the original word. either alone or in combination, to express the idea which he wished to convey. If it be urged, that the advocates of Te, have adopted indiscriminately Shang-te, Te, and Theen te, we answer, that these terms are in Chinese estimation nearly synony mous; that they are used interchangeably, and are interpreted in native books the one by the other, which can never be said of Shin and choo, or Shiu and T'heen, or Shin and 帝 Te. We do not by adopting either of these terms occasionally, combine ideas that are essentially distinct, nor convey an entirely different idea, as those do who interchange the terms above commented on, or explain them the one by the other. Even 天主 T'héen choo would not differ so materially from T'heen te, or Shang-te, as to strike the Chinese mind with the incongruity of mixing them up together. We therefore conclude, that the same charge of inconsistency would not lie against the advocates of 'Te, of conbining or interchanging the term with Theen te, or E Shang-te, as would lie agamst the adv cates of Shin, for combin |